Web servers may be accessed by users in any part of the world. Users accessing a particular Web server may communicate using any number of different languages. To support users around the world, it is necessary to have a “global” Web server that supports numerous languages. Such a Web server should be capable of distributing content in multiple different languages.
Certain existing Web servers support multiple languages by duplicating all content for each language or locale. This approach leads to a large number of files that may become difficult to manage, especially when a large number of languages or locales are supported. Further, as the content stored on the Web server increases, the duplicated content increases at a greater magnitude. Large amounts of content on a Web server require corresponding storage space on hard disk drives and other memory devices. As the amount of content stored on a Web server increases, the performance of the Web server may decrease.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an architecture that efficiently handles localization of content distributed by Web servers.